Mamas without borders

Why more mainland Chinese women are rushing to give birth in Hong Kong

A LITTLE noticed tourist boom has been taking place in Hong Kong, as mothers-to-be flock to the city. Last year tourists from the mainland accounted for a striking 36% of all the babies born in the territory, a sharp rise on previous years, and the trend is resolutely upwards.

Mainlanders are noticing some obvious benefits of giving birth in Hong Kong. Perhaps most importantly, the one-child policy does not apply in the territory. Maternal treatment is also generally better, at least when weighed against stories of bad care and negligence in mainland hospitals, especially for those who fail to pay big bribes. And the welfare system in rabidly capitalist Hong Kong is more generous than on the Communist mainland. A child born in Hong Kong gets free education for 12 years and almost free medical care. Although local hospitals charge up-front (mainlanders pay at least HK$39,000, or $5,000, per birth), the longer-term gains make the cost worthwhile.

Such public benefits are also starting to draw others, including the elderly, the canniest of whom try to claim handouts in the city while living on the relatively cheaper mainland. Hong Kong's authorities have tried to scotch this, for example by demanding that welfare applicants prove they have lived in Hong Kong for a year. But this requirement was struck down by a court in June, which ruled that it infringed (Hong Kong) citizens' rights to travel freely.

Yet some may become reluctant to leave the city at all. The much-discussed fate of one Hong Kong resident has provided a cautionary tale: a woman who crossed the border to visit relatives in Shenzhen, on the mainland, gave birth prematurely, to twins. After shoddy treatment and bureaucratic misery she remains stranded, with her young children, unable to get back home to Hong Kong. It must be all the more galling, therefore, to see pregnant mainlanders rushing in.